[odf-discuss] Fwd: W3C Lead on CDF says OpenDocument Fellowship Position on CDF Makes No Sense

[M. Fioretti]

On Thu, Nov 15, 2007 14:11:40 PM +0100, Peter Vandenabeele
(peter at vandenabeele.com) wrote:

> On Nov 15, 2007 7:58 AM, M. Fioretti <mfioretti at nexaima.net> wrote:
> ...
> > Most others instead, including me, have come to the conclusion
> > that this is really a fake issue:
> >
> > - That when you go to check how things really stand, that kind of
> >   interoperability has never existed or been guaranteed, unless sender
> >   and receiver of a document had identical sw and hw configurations
> 
> I believe that some mature open standards such as tcp/ip or SMTP or
> DNS or ... _do_allow "near perfect" interop

Yes, but I was referring specifically to interoperability through office files.

> I prefer the slight disadvantages of maybe not 100% but only 99%
> technical interoperability over the disadvantage of having to run
> 100% of the same HW/SW solution everywhere.

me too, of course. The problem is to make the CFOs and policy makers
understand this point and don't even try to insist for 100%, not if
they want to keep their job (speaking of general policies, of course,
there's no doubt that in single cases one may have to delay the real
solution for several reasons).

> We are just in a transition here

and we have to make clear that some "service interruption" is not only
much less than MS says, but also... simply unavoidable. Somebody said
that (and I love the argument) that this is just like when ramps
alongside staircases and elevators with braille buttons became
mandatory by law. It had to be done, period, everybody whining during
those short intervals when elevators or staircases were being upgraded
was simply ignored and after the upgrade nobody had any problem
anymore.

> But, we must be carefull to not end up with multiple standards
> divided per region, such as "letter" in North/Central-America and
> "A4" in Rest Of World, PAL vs. NTSC, 220V vs. 110V etc.... What can
> we do to avoid such a split haunting us for the coming 100 years?

Here I disagree with your analysis:
 
> If one standard is open and the other not, than the case seems
> simple, the open standard will win eventually if the technical
> merits are similar.

this would be true only if both the open and the closed standard
appeared in the same moment, with the same marketing effort and no
existing document already locked, which is exactly the contrary of the
current situation. Things being what they are, instead, makes
mandatory to stop as soon as possible, at least at government level to
produce, store or accept editable office files in anything but
OpenDocument, no matter how OOXML looks "open"

> But what if 2 _really_ open standards would come into existance?
> Quite a nightmare, especially with increased globalization of
> economy, culture, politics, ... That is IMO a very fundamental
> problem that needs to be addressed.

There is a fundamental difference between the OOXML/ODF case and the
others you have mentioned: all those things, plugs, TV signals, paper
size etc... are *physical*, ie supporting them both means
manufacturing and maintaining twice the tools, trays, packaging,
technicians skills etc... a huge cost indeed at many levels.

In many cases the real cost isn't even in "more than one open,
official standard", is that vendors aren't (cannot be?) forced to
produce compatible products where no standards exist, think to cell
phones and their chargers.

File formats, instead, are immaterial, you can store both of them on
the same hard drive. IF both OOXML and ODF were equally open and they
both remained around for decades or more... it would be terribly
stupid, of course, but it would only affect the few programmers who'd
have to deal with both formats, and the people paying them.

A real cost for sure, but nothing comparable with keeping multiple
paper trays, power plugs etc...

So considering this and the fact that there is only ONE really open
office file standard which is realistically usable today... I'm not
that worried about this last problem.

	Marco
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